By Zachary Stieber

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats have sued the Trump administration over its effort to remove noncitizens from voter registration lists.

The Oct. 20 lawsuit, filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, says that the effort is based on “shoddily compiled lists of supposed noncitizens—target lists that have crumbled upon the barest inspection.”

In Nevada, for instance, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it identified nearly 16,000 noncitizens registered to vote. DHS later reduced the number to 185 voters, then “failed to substantiate even that narrower assertion after Nevada officials indicated that every single one of those voters appeared to be citizens,” the lawsuit states.

In another example, the administration tried to force California not to issue ballots to more than 20,000 registered voters over citizenship concerns, but more than 25 percent of the individuals on the list were actually born in the United States, the plaintiffs said.

“None of this is lawful. The Executive Branch enjoys no authority to superintend state voter list maintenance, to supplant state determinations of who is qualified to vote, or to dictate who gets a ballot or whose ballot gets segregated—Congress has kept that responsibility with the States, subject only to a narrow civil enforcement power the administration has declined to invoke during its recent efforts,” the Democrats said.

“Nor does the Executive Branch get to decide which voters appear on a State’s voter rolls, which registered voters can receive a ballot, or whose ballots are counted.”

Plaintiffs include Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The lawsuit alleges violations of the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. It asks the federal court to find that the president and other officials unconstitutionally demanded states remove registered voters and threatened states with legal action if they failed to comply. The court should block the officials from continuing to issue such threats, they said.

Defendants include Trump, the Department of Justice, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

The White House and the Department of Justice did not return requests for comment by the time of publication.

The administration sued California earlier this month, alleging the state did not take any serious action to verify the citizenship of more than 20,000 individuals whom the federal government said were “likely noncitizens.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services identified the people before a secondary review by Homeland Security Investigations, part of DHS, according to court documents.

California mails ballots to all registered voters.

Government lawyers said a federal judge should block California from counting mail-in ballots from the likely noncitizens until their citizenship status can be determined.

“State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.

“If found responsible in a court of law, the State of California will have seriously undermined confidence in our electoral system and violated laws that protect our nation’s representative system of government. The Department of Justice will continue working to uncover cases of voter fraud, hold fraudsters accountable, and restore trust in American elections.”